E3: Getting the Full 'Call of Duty' Experience

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16 Jun 2015

2015 is the year that Call of Duty complicates your life. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is out on Friday, November 6th and a lot of players were relieved to hear the announcement that the game will be coming for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 after all. The game was originally announced only for Xbox One and PS4 and it looked like this was the year console manufacturers were going to force everyone to upgrade.

Instead, they're doing something that's either sneaky or brilliant, depending on your perspective. Activision enlisted Beenox and Mercenary Technology to create a 360/PS3 version of the game to complement the main version created by Treyarch. You can still play the game on the older generation consoles, but you'll be getting a dumbed-down version of the experience due to technical limitations from the last-generation boxes. Here's the Activision spin:

Xbox 360 and PS3 players will be able to experience Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’s gameplay across campaign, multiplayer and zombies. While the teams are working to deliver the best possible experience for Xbox 360 and PS3, naturally there will be some differences across generations. For instance, the campaign mode on Xbox 360 and PS3 is currently in development with a goal of enabling two-player cooperative play, instead of the four-player cooperative campaign on next-gen. There will also be some other features and functionality built specifically for the new generation of consoles that cannot be supported on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Here's how that's going to work: owners of the old machines will play the game on their friends' new consoles and see exactly what the new machines can do and then they'll finally decide to upgrade. And now that Microsoft is adding reverse compatibility for a limited number of 360 games to the Xbox One, a lot of gamers may finally decide to make the switch.

Then there's the news from ESPN the Magazine that Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch (the guy who would've won the Super Bowl if Russell Wilson had just handed him the ball instead of making that dumb pass) will be playing a mercenary in Black Ops 3. Lynch has been a huge CoD fan since his college days but the news has to disappoint Army veteran and hardcore gamer Ice T, who's been touting his CoD love for years.

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At the E3 game show in Los Angeles this week, Activision unveiled the new Multiplayer trailer. The new movement system allows players to fluidly chain movements together while playing in maps that have been designed from the ground-up to push strong head-to-head action. You can choose to play as one of nine new Specialists, each with their own look, personality, abilities, and level progression system. Players can equip up to five attachments and an optic while customizing nearly every aspect of their loadout with the new Gunsmith, then tap the power of the Weapon Paintshop to give weapons a signature look.

The final CoD bombshell is that Call of Duty Black Ops 3 DLC map packs will have a 30-day exclusive on the PS4 instead of the Xbox One. That's a gigantic change but one that reflects how much better Sony's console has been selling versus the Microsoft machine.